Fix for Outlook 2007 Trying to Load InfoPath (Error 1605)

Just ran into this situation after a client uninstalled & reinstalled Office 2007 Pro. When Outlook was opened, it complained twice about being unable to open InfoPath because it wasn’t installed.

I found multiple other complaints about this, but no solutions (though some suggested removing and reinstalling Office). A bit of digging with SysInternals’ Process Monitor, turned up mention of not finding the somewhat promising value “DisableInfopathForms,” so I took a stab and created the value as a DWORD under the location ProcMon was reporting. Setting the value to 1 cleared the problem on Outlook startup.

Researching this at home later, I found very little mention of this value. The only useful mention is in Designing Forms for Microsoft Office InfoPath and Forms Services 2007 from O’Reilly, which also points out that the setting is available under Tools, Options, Other tab, Advanced Options button as a checkbox to disable InfoPath forms (as well as at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options\Mail where I created it).

According to the book this option is supposed to default to on (presumably treating a nonexistent registry value as “1” or true). I’m not sure what happened in this case since the registry value was absent and I’m not sure what the checkbox in the options display was showing.

I think it was probably easier to find this by using ProcMon to look for Outlook failures than by searching the options.

Having exactly the problem you are describing and there definitely don’t seem to be a “real” solutions around so far.
So I am going to get ProcMon and see what it says, but can you tell me the location ProcMon was reporting the error to you at?
Also, I presume you created a registry entry, can you let us know the details of exactly what you created?
I want to see if ProcMon shows me similar information and at least have a good feeling that I am doing the proper fix.
Thanks

Sorry if I wasn’t clear in the post – the key is HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0OutlookOptionsMail, the value is a DWORD named “DisableInfopathForms”. Set to 1 to disable the forms.
The simpler solution should be in Outlook, go to Tools, Options, Other tab, Advanced Options button, then look for a checkbox to disable InfoPath forms. It’s present, just poorly documented.

No I should say sorry, it was me not understanding the HKCU as “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” in the registry.
Anyway, I added the entry and Outlook2007 now starts up WITHOUT the 1605 error and seems to be stable. Yea!!!! Thank you!!!

However, if I now go into the Tools\Options\Other and as soon as I click on Advanced the same 1605 error pops up. I can click OK and get into the Advanced Options and the InfoPath option is GREYED out. (I have print screens if you would like to see them)

Now Outlook seems to be stable and running, but any ideas about correcting that 1605 error when going into the Advanced Options?

I suspect that opening that configuration page is attempting to do something to check for InfoPath. The checkbox being disabled is probably because of the presence of that registry key – since it’s there, the checkbox has no effect.

You might be able to remove that registry value, delete it, and go see if you can change that setting. You may need to have Outlook completely closed before removing that value for it to be a good test.

Thanks for the info in this post…this must be a rare problem, because this is just about the only post I could find, but your description of the Tools\Options\Other\Advanced Options setting saved the day! For some unexplainable reason, my Infopath Forms folder in Outlook stopped behaving like an Infopath Forms folder…It wouldn’t even offer the “InfoPath Actions” item on the right click menu, so I could no longer export to Excel. Setting the “Accept Infopath Forms” checkbox on the Tools\Options\Other\Advanced Options fixed the problem. Thank you very much for taking the time to post!

so far, no luck with what you say – my case is different, the infopath box in Advanced Options is greyed out so I can’t get at it from there – and the registry hack you suggest is not somethign I really feel I’m qualified to try as trial and error can be a harsh teacher sometimes!

Thinking that when the microsoft (advanced) techsupport guy came in to fix things yesterday after a reinstall of Office 2007, he was removing so much stuff from the registry that hey may have missed something. Searching on infopath in the registry finds it in MANY places – and this is not something I ever used or wanted to use.

So I may be dialing in to Microsoft Support to get their wizards working on this.